Part three. The Market
The Tier Exercise
Five steps to find out which tier you are really serving, rather than the one you describe.
Read the transcript
Stated positioning and actual positioning diverge quietly, and the operation follows the actual one. Five steps. One. Take the last twenty closed deals and write down, for each, the single reason the buyer gave for choosing you. Their words, not the account manager summary. Two. Sort them into the three tiers: price, value, time. Anything that will not sort goes in a fourth pile and stays there. Three. Do the same for the last ten you lost. Four. Ask each function separately which tier they believe the company serves. Five. Put it all side by side. The interesting result is almost never the tier. It is the spread, and the spread is why the seams keep failing.
Stated positioning and actual positioning diverge quietly, and the operation follows the actual one. Five steps to find out which you have.
One. Take the last twenty closed deals and write down, for each, the single reason the buyer gave for choosing you. Their words, not the account manager's summary.
Two. Sort them into the three tiers: price, value, time. Anything that will not sort goes in a fourth pile and stays there.
Three. Do the same for the last ten you lost, using the reason the buyer gave for going elsewhere.
Four. Ask each function, separately, which tier they believe the company serves. Sales, delivery, support, finance.
Five. Put all of it side by side.
The interesting result is almost never the tier. It is the spread. When the won deals say one thing, the lost deals say another, and the four functions give three different answers, you have found the reason the seams keep failing, and it is upstream of every process you were about to redesign.
Two things worth doing, neither of which costs anything
Read the standard in full, free and in the open, before you pay anything or give anyone an address.